Tuesday April 01, 2003

The names of the once-condemned still haunt George Ryan.

"There's a guy we almost executed," the former Illinois governor said of one such death row inmate. "He had been measured for a burial suit, and he ordered his last meal."

That was Anthony Porter, who spent 16 years on death row before he was freed when another man confessed to the murder. Porter was 48 hours away from dying on the Illinois' lethal injection gurney.

Ryan, 69, made history in January by emptying his state's death row before leaving office, a decision that instantly left him celebrated, denounced and questioned for possible political motives. Loyola University named Ryan this year's Gillis Long Poverty Law Center Distinguished Speaker, and in an appearance at Loyola's Law School on Monday night, the lifelong Republican reflected on his about-face, from death penalty supporter to the man who in one fell swoop commuted 167 death sentences to life terms.

"When Anthony Porter was released from death row, everything I believed in about our criminal justice system came into question," Ryan told the crowd, which included law students, alumni and activist nun Helen Prejean.

Ryan declared a moratorium on Illinois executions in 2000, after 13 men had been freed from death row, and ordered a commission to review each capital case.

Illinois had cases in which detectives beat confessions out of suspects and cases in which eyewitness testimony -- with no physical evidence -- was all it took to put someone on death row. Other cases hinged entirely on jailhouse snitches. Particularly troubling for Ryan was that 35 African-Americans on death row were convicted by all-white juries.

Since Illinois reinstated its death penalty in 1977 -- a law Ryan supported as a state representative -- the state has executed 12 people. Thirteen have been exonerated.

Ryan doesn't think the inequities are limited to his state. "We should be absolutely embarrassed by our capital punishment system," he said.

When critics questioned how a governor could make such a blanket, far-reaching decision as emptying death row, Ryan, a pharmacist by training with 35 years of public service, put it as plainly as his Midwestern upbringing: "I was the man who had to give the final order, to inject poison in fatal doses into a man's veins. With that at stake, how could I go on with this system?"

Ryan's mass commutation came at a time when his political popularity was fading.

This month, a federal jury convicted his one-time closest aide and the governor's campaign committee of racketeering during Ryan's time as secretary of state. The committee agreed to forfeit $750,000, and the aide was convicted of illegally putting state employees to work on several campaigns. The federal investigation has nabbed 54 people in five years. Ryan was not charged.

The former governor still wrestles with the questions of capital punishment but has stopped short of calling for the abolition of state-sponsored execution.

"Should the state be in the business of executions? I always thought that it was OK until I became the executioner," he said. As governor, Ryan permitted one execution, a man convicted of mutilating women.

"He was the fellow I think the death penalty was made for, if you believe in it," Ryan said. "But I was also shaken that I made the decision to take someone's life. That feeling has gnawed at me ever since."

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Gwen Filosa can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3304.